Japanese family life is falling apart — and the reasons why go back to World War II

Japan is in the midst of a fertility crisis, and it's 65 years in the making.

Saddled with long work hours and rising expenses, young Japanese couples are opting not to have kids. Even if they have the energy to start a family, many simply don't have the time.

As a result, spending shrinks on the small scale and the Japanese economy contracts on the large scale. Japan has seen trillions in lost GDP over the past years, in combination with a population decline of 1 million people. Harvard sociologist Mary Brinton puts it bluntly: "This is death to the family," she tells Business Insider.

Was post world war 2 a positive era for Japan? Dealing with American rule, a defeat in a war, rebuilding, not to mention clean up after having two nukes dropped on them, it seems like they wouldn't have experienced the same economic boom that America did in the 50s.

And can you really blame work for the lack of kids? In a modern society where there's widely available porn, distractions like the Internet and video games, and a good understanding of contraception, maybe it's the natural state of modern society to produce less kids as it goes.

Here's a quote that I heard the other day:

“A civilization without pain and suffering seems to be the ideal of the human race. However, I wonder if people might end up with losing sight of joy, and forgetting the meaning of life, in a society pervaded by pain reduction mechanisms and filled with pleasure.” -Masahiro Moriokahttp://www.lifestudies.org/painless01.html

Basically, the guy thinks that we're removing all conflict in modern life and he thinks that's a bad thing. Kids take resources like time and money. Statistically, people who have kids are slightly more unhappy than people that don't. And aren't a lot of people in Japan nowaday NEETS? If you can survive on a part-time job, then why not? Older people are holding down on permanent positions longer, so there's more competition and it's not as easy to obtain them. It's no wonder people would opt to wait till they're in a more stable financial situation or not have kids at all.

Edit: I just realize I fired at the hip and didn't even read the original article. My apologies if I hit anything that was addressed in it.

I feel like it might be a good thing? I mean, yeah, you got an elderly heavy population right now, but they're also the ones with all the wealth and land and stuff. If the population goes down then there will be a chance for the younger generation to get some of that. There are too many people in Tokyo anyway.

Housing costs skyrocketing due to Real estate Speculators in the 80's and then the economic crisis that resulted from that in the 90's and early 2000's I would think as a more recent factor in causing this situation, as not enough money to move out and live independently? Less likely to meet people or want to get into a relationship, especially with an entire generation having grown up under the mindset to be more frugal and minimalist.
I've seen the videos of people living in closets the size of a coffin as they can't afford anything else due to how expensive homes and apartments Still are due to shortages. There's no way you're going to raise a family like that.

But it's not like Business insider would see this and compare it to more recent times with the long-standing slander of millennial living post-economic recession, right?

What started as a healthy 2.75 children per woman in the 1950s fell to 2.08 by 1960.

yeah, that was the beginning and end of the population boom. other countries saw a similar surge during that period. Baby boomers, anyone?
So this article is already contradicting their purported cause and effect behind their entire thesis, as something else was responsible for a massive growth rate that then went back down to normal. Their correlation of PM Yoshida's Economic policies to this thus doesn't add up.

I would figure bigger factors (on top of Japan's Lost Decade) would be stuff like women not being welcomed back or able to keep their job after getting pregnant due to the societal expectation of them then becoming full-time moms, or the stigma against Public displays of affection or signs of a relationship, popular media of the culture rarely having people hook up, the pressure to study in the years where teens would date to learn how to interact like that properly, the factors of depression and suicide culling the populace, or those insane hours being necessary to be able to support ones-self now which makes it so a single-income family can't support themselves all bigger influences.
Though having just come off a full 4-day weekend of having pulled double-shifts because of memorial day, that last one isn't exactly limited to Japan.

It's likely all of these and others compounding one-another into an ongoing mess, but I feel it's just...downright foolish to all pin it on just this one thing like this article is phrasing it as.

I'm not so sure this is unique to Japan, as much as them being ahead of the curve. There are definitely cultural reasons they're first, but everyone else is going the same direction.

The two-income household being a requirement to raise a family combined with the spiraling cost of kids has made them a massive economic burden. And while there are reasons to have kids besides economics, it's become an increasingly strong disincentive.

(At some point here, a lawmaker is going to seriously suggest outlawing birth control. That will be an interesting day)

According to Business Insider, in 2016, the fifth most expensive city in the world to live in is.... Tokyo, Japan. (For comparison, New York City is number 11). I think the limited land mass plays a factor in this. How many Japanese shows have portrayed life as follows:

* Visiting a apartment verses a small home
* On top of a roof.... or, in a school situation, the field IS on the roof of the school
* On a transit system (psssttt.... Ressha Sentai ToQger)

I don't think it's really so bad to be in a small apartment as opposed to a small home. Even the smallest apartments in Tokyo are at least 15 SQ meters, which is larger than some college dorms, and some Paris apartments are only 6.

Also, most of the time they shoot stuff on roofs cause they're cheap and easy to film XD most people aren't allowed on the roof of any high building